'You Got Any Gas?'

When I was young and our family drove into a gas station, my father would lean out and ask the attendant (this was a time when a gas station employee filled the tank) a crazy question:

“Have you got any gas?”

I would roll my eyes.

“What kind of a crazy question is that? Of course he has gas.”

What I didn’t realize as a know-it-all 12-year-old was that my father was not asking about gas. He was engaging in what a recent article in The Economist calls “mindless small talk,” which ultimately is about building bonds across people.

In these days where we are unable to see people face-to-face as much, research suggests that we are “tired, bored, alienated and lonely.” We don’t have the opportunities for small talk or mindless chatter with each other. And, it turns out, we need it. Research by University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley found that when people engage in small talk, even with strangers, they were happier. This held in the U.S. as well as in more reserved England.

But most of us downplay or rebuff the notion of small talk as having any benefit. Part of that is because it devolves to low-level, expected, and unenlightening questions or responses.

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“Looks like rain.”

None of these comments in many cultures would yield a meaningful response. Oddly, though, they create a tiny connection. And, if something goes wrong—a train or bus stops unexpectedly, a plane sits on the tarmac for an extra hour—then small talk may turn to collective griping, and give us a sense of community, even as we complain.

Waiting.

Source: Kelli McClintock/Unsplash

The article continues to argue that at work, people use different forms of small talk, ranging from the simple “hello” to social talk relating to work (“Is Tom back from vacation?”) to stronger work-related talk (“Did Tom finish the project?”). It builds connection and bonds as people share an experience.

The piece closes with a line that struck me:

“Well-wishing binds people together.”

And why wouldn’t we do more of that in a time when well-wishing has taken a beating?